A relay race is won and lost by the slowest runner! Bottlenecks are like the slowest runner.

Why would I want to do a Value Stream Map, Capacity Analysis or Spaghetti diagram and what should I do with the information once my team has worked hard and developed it? Well, the answer to the question is certainly not display all the information to everyone around so that you can have a good dog and pony show about process improvement the next time a VP comes through (although if you follow through, it is the beginning of a great story). The real reason we go through all of that work is to identify key areas of improvement opportunity and start to implement changes that will allow better performance of the value stream.

One of the key areas of improvement that these tools drive us to is bottleneck elimination. A bottleneck is the process within the value stream that limits the output. For instance, if there are 6 steps in the process of creating a customer order (taking the call may be step 1, Engineering review of the quote request may be step 2 and so on), whichever step requires the longest amount of time to complete is the bottleneck. The output of the value stream can never be greater than output of the bottleneck process. As bottlenecks are identified and eliminated, products or information will flow through them more rapidly and new bottleneck processes will be identified and will need to be addressed.

In order to eliminate bottlenecks, you may consider the approaches below. Of course, the right one will depend on the specific set of circumstances in your value stream.

1. Balance the workload: Other processes may have excess capacity that can be utilized to offload some work from the bottleneck process. This is typically a very good method to alleviate bottlenecks.
2. Hold a kaizen event to reduce the non-value-add portion of the work.
3. Hold a kaizen event to reduce non-value-added work from another process so that work can be offloaded from the bottleneck. This has the added benefit of not disrupting the bottlenecked operation until some work can offloaded. Another kaizen event should follow to reduce non-value-added work in the bottleneck process once some of the pressure has been relieved.
4. Follow the high level value stream mapping with a detailed process map of the bottleneck and look for improvement opportunities.
5. Add resources to the bottleneck. Notice that this is the last suggested approach and I hesitate to put it on the list because it is very overused as a means to reduce bottlenecks. We typically jump to this one first, when it should really be pursued last. It made the list because there are times when adding resources is the only way to reduce the bottleneck, but this should be used primarily when customer demand has increased to a point that the bottleneck cannot keep up, rather than as a solution for poor process efficiency. Bottom line: Make sure you have the data to support the solution of adding more resources before you consider it as a solution.

 

Good luck and keep looking for the bottlenecks!

Series: Executing a Kaizen Event

After I had led several Kaizen events, it hit me that I probably had eaten more Pizza served in the name of team lunches than I had outside of work. To be fair, I’m not a big Pizza eater anyway, but it seems that when a team is working together 10-12 hours a day during a Kaizen event, lunch is a great time to relax a little and process any thoughts the team has on the even we are currently performing. Pizza seems to help with this task.

One of the most common thoughts that most people new to properly executed Kaizen Events have is around the structure and the discipline of the event. They believed that executing a Kaizen Event just means locking yourselves in a room for a day, debating ad nauseam and coming out with some corrective action. Unfortunately, they also believe that the best thing you get out of these events is the free lunch. This is usually due to Kaizen events executed improperly, sometimes being led by people who think they are fighting fires, not carrying out a long-term improvement and corrective actions that may or may not work because the cause of the problem is usually conjecture with no evidence to back it up.

To overcome this issue, it is important for me to explain to the team what Kaizen is and what the structure of a Kaizen Event looks like as the first part of the event. And that is what I’d like to do for you in this series of posts.

Kaizen is a Japanese term that means unceasing change for the better. It is an iterative philosophy of continuous improvements (often very small in nature), rather than an attempt to make a process perfect based on tools like long term research, modeling and capital investment. The learning that takes place through these small, incremental changes may be more important than the improvement, because it is the foundation that leads to the next Kaizen and the next and so on. Kaizen doesn’t let the hope of becoming perfect get in the way of getting better.

Although it is based on the same philosophy, a Kaizen event is a bit more formal and of a larger magnitude. A Kaizen Event is typically a 1 week event that includes:

• Training: A brief training session to cover topics specific to the event
• Planning: A short planning session to determine specific activities that will take place and what the timeline will be (the timeline is typically done in hours since the events are usually 1 week or less)
• Doing: A period of implementing improvements
• Checking: Implementation of standard work and other methods to ensure improvements are sustained

Although it is based on the same philosophy, a Kaizen event is a bit more formal and of a larger magnitude. A Kaizen Event is typically a 1 week event that includes:

• Proper up-front planning
• Completing a project charter
• Selecting a great team
• Discovering causes (if it isn’t obvious)
• Creating solutions
• Managing the follow-up action item list
• Keeping the team on schedule
• Giving a good management presentation to celebrate the team’s success

Properly executed, a Kaizen Event is not a one-day meeting, were we get in a room, have some discussions on what’s wrong without any data or visibility into the problem and some corrective action that may as well be guess-work. It is about the discipline to plan, gather data, dig deeper into true causes, try a fix and measure how well (or even just if) the problem was fixed.

Finally, a quick note about nomenclature. Although he term Kaizen Event has been widely adopted, other, similar terms are also used: Blitz, Kaizen Blitz, Breakout, Spike, CIE (short for Continuous Improvement Event) and many other terms all represent essentially the same activities. The name really doesn’t matter. It is the goal of continual improvement and the discipline to carry it out in a well-organized manner with a good amount of preparation is what is important.

I will be posting each topic in ‘keys to a good kaizen event’ list above future posts. You can follow them by clicking on the items or just Executing a Kaizen Event series. Until then, feel free to comment on your experiences during improvement events (even if they weren’t officially Kaizen events)? What were some keys to success or factors for failure that you experienced?

Type: Workflow Waste

Birds do it. Bees do it. You do it almost everyday, especially in the office! I’m referring, of course, to handoffs – the act of turning over tasks, information, data, documents, forms, material goods, etc. to a colleague, group, department, etc. Unfortunately, for something that is such an embedded part of our process, the simple fact is that handoffs are a source of immense waste.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” you say, “We need to hand our work-product off to the next downstream consumer!” True, but consider the definition of a handoff to see how they are a source of waste. Handoffs are the relinquishment of responsibility over an item or task from one party and the delegation of that responsibility to another party. Handoffs occur on different levels, including handing off within your own team, to another team, another department or another company (i.e., supplier, vendor, partner, customer, etc.). Unfortunately, with each handoff, we get other forms of waste creeping in, including, audits, batching & queuing, and worst of all, waiting. The more removed the party being handed off to is (both organizationally and physically), the worse the associated wastes become.

To illustrate this point, consider Alice and Bob who sit in neighboring cubes (yes, I know you know I hate cubes but that’s a whole different discussion). If Alice needed to hand Bob a document, she would merely do just that: hand it to him. He, in-turn, may have a brief discussion about it with her. If something requires Alice’s attention when Bob is working on it, Bob would just pop his head over his cube and ask Alice to look at it.

Now consider the situation if Bob worked for another organization. Because of the separation, she will most likely email the document to him, where it will sit until he can get to it. (Don’t discount how much the cliché “out of sight, out of mind” is a real contributor to waste.) He will then have to go through the document to make sure everything is in order (a wasteful audit) before he will assume responsibility. This may involve one or several meetings (when schedules align) and back-and-forths until Bob is satisfied. If Bob has to hand off to Charlie, who is a customer, this process will repeat, and so will the waiting and reviews.

Lets compound this by saying that Alice deals with numerous documents every week that need to be processed and handed off to Bob. Is it more likely she will hand them off when each is completed or when several are gathered? The answer depends on how closely they work together and know each-other. The larger the organizational and/or physical gap, the more Alice tends to batch-process. So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that batching leads to a lot of wasted time within a process for that document to just ‘sit’ waiting to be acted upon. Worse, Bob now inherits a stack of items to audit before he will accept them – more time to process before the real work can continue.

The person who really feels this is the end customer. While Alice and Bob are worried about their parts within the whole, the customer experiences the entire time, from start to end. This includes all the batching, waiting and reviews.

One more dimension to consider here are vertical handoffs. Consider Alice’s boss Donna. Many processes dictate that before Alice can hand off externally to Bob, she must get approval. This means she does the handoff song and dance with Donna, who may do it with Emily, her boss, and so on. I am sorry to say that I have worked with more than a few companies that had processes where one or more checkpoints required 4-5 levels of approvals. 80% of the waiting in these check points were due to the third level and above just getting to review it and sign off but the average time spent reviewing the materials to be approved was mere seconds. When asked why, the answer given was usually “We had multiple levels already review it. If they signed off, I have no reason to look at it.” If that’s the case, why have more than one or two levels of approval in the first place? (This is yet another blog)

Now imagine that parties within the process aren’t handing documents off but real people – you and me. We have all experienced this form of waste being the party acted upon. Consider the following processes:

• Help desks (especially with credit cards): Giving information to the automated attendant and then being transferred multiple times, each time being asked the SAME information (audit)
• Restaurants: different person taking order, delivering drinks, and delivering food (each time they are verifying they have the right customer while you wait and your food gets colder)
• Airports: Dragging bags from check-in over to a different drop-off point at airports

I would wager that you have experienced this waste in many more forms as a customer. Tell us about them. We’d love to hear from you.

Stay tuned – same Bat-topic, same Bat-channel. In our next post, we’ll discuss how to find this waste and some ideas to overcome them.

Like most of you, I thoroughly enjoyed a long weekend celebrating Easter recently.  The extra day off gave me some time to work around the house and while I did, I got to thinking about Lean and how it applies almost everywhere.    In fact, the Lean Tools almost form a foundation that has allowed us to progress and create ever more complex technologies. 

OK, I know this may be a little bit of a stretch and I’m not saying that without Lean techniques, we would still be using square wheels, BUT the core beliefs of Lean certainly align with those that have enabled us to advance.  For instance, the Lean concept of Standard Work forms a foundation for improvement much like any other standard practice.  Once a new idea has proven effective, it must be shared.  At first, others adopt the practice and learn to apply it.  Then they improve on it and the sharing of the new idea starts all over.    When work is standardized, the same principle applies.  Others can be trained to perform the task in the standard way, and then improvements can be made.  If there is no standard method, it is impossible to tell if a change has a positive impact or a negative one.

Another foundational principal of Lean is the implementation of small improvements to our daily work. This concept is often called Kaizen: continuous change for the better.  Most of us are continually seeking to improve our daily lives by reducing the amount of time different tasks take.   In fact, we spend a great deal of money seeking to make tasks such as cleaning and yard work easier and faster.  If we use the Lean principles such as 5S (Workplace Organization) and Waste Reduction, we can eliminate waste in our daily work both professionally and personally.

Standard Work, waste elimination, Kaizen and many other powerful tools of Lean can be applied to our everyday lives to reduce frustration, improve efficiency and increase effectiveness.  Maybe in later posts, we will discuss some others.  I am pondering a video post on applying Setup Reduction to our daily lives, but let’s see what you think of this concept first.  Please let me know.  Chime in with examples of small improvements to your daily life that fall into this thought process or ideas for future posts on this topic.

 

Hello Friends,

I wanted to let you know about an interactive webinar that I thought you may be interested in called ‘The Top 10 Wastes in the Office’ on Monday, May 3rd at 2:00pm Eastern.   

Waste is any item, practice, task, process, etc. that adds no value to customers or shareholders.  It is all around us but we rarely see it as waste.  Join us for this free web event on what we consider 'The Top 10 Forms of Waste in the Office'. We will review definitions of value and waste followed by counting down some of the largest forms of wasted found in the office, including waste due to data and information, workflows and employees.

THIS IS NOT A TRADITIONAL WEBINAR.  Don’t expect to simply listen and type in questions at the end. This webinar will include interactive exercises and discussion.  Along with slides, you will see the instructor at all times via a LIVE streaming video.

Our goal is for you to start identifying waste in your own workplace immediately after this session.

For more information, please browse the webinar page.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think may be interested.

 

Lean is the constant pursuit of identifying and eliminating waste and there are many different tools that Lean practitioners use to accomplish this goal, but they all align with the one guiding principle of identifying and eliminating waste. We will discuss many types of waste in upcoming posts, but we should lay some ground rules and agree on some basic principles before going too deep.

First, let’s agree on how to define waste. I will give you the accepted definition, but your input would make this a much richer exploration, so please respond by adding to my definition or challenging it as you see fit. Primarily, waste is the opposite of value. Of course, this leads to the question of what is value. Since value may be a little simpler to get our minds around, let’s first define it as anything the customer is willing to pay for. Think of value as something that changes the form, fit, or function of a tangible product that the customer buys, or any service that someone is willing to pay for. Ultimately, this means that waste is any activity that doesn’t change the form, fit, function or value of the good or service. 

Next, we should discuss waste elimination as a philosophy. I contend that total waste elimination is a lofty goal that can never fully be achieved and is somewhat nebulous and idealistic. It may even be irrelevant. However, we should never accept waste that we see and we should be in a constant battle to eliminate it. 

Finally, the relationship between work and waste should be highlighted. Virtually all waste is work, but the opposite is certainly not true. Just because we classify an activity as something that the customer is unwilling to pay for doesn’t mean that it isn’t work. In fact, the very reason we strive to eliminate it is because work is required to perform the activity, but isn’t rewarded by the customer. We must always be mindful of this and be careful how we present our findings as we search for waste. People often take offense when an activity that they exert great amounts of energy to complete, is classified as wasteful. An employee who takes pride in his work will often feel stressed, angry or hurt at such an assessment. Handling these situations with empathy and coaching can make the difference in whether or not someone is willing to help us eliminate wasteful activities or not. After all, they are more than likely tired at the end of their work day, even if the customer is unwilling to pay for their activities. Being sensitive to this and helping employees understand how to eliminate waste without disrespecting their effort will help get everyone on board with our waste elimination efforts and maintain a healthy sense of respect.

This post will be followed by 30 or so more over the next few months which will deep-dive into different forms of waste in the office as well as suggestions on how to remove them.  Each post is meant to teach you how to see that particular form of waste.  We would love to hear examples for each from your environment one as well as what you did about it.

 

 

No, your business isn’t different!  Yes, Lean does work in your industry!

There seems to be a consistent theme that resonates with most organizations when they are first exposed to Lean philosophies and tools. Most people seem to think that their organization is different, unique or special in some way that will prevent the Lean concepts from working or limit their impact. 

A study of the various change models and philosophies, has led me to accept the fact that Lean practitioners (and change agents of all types) bear a significant burden of convincing others that change is needed and that it will be worth the effort. Deep down, it frustrates me a little, but I accept it as part of the change agent role and realize that without the need for paradigm shifts, my chosen profession would be equally unneeded. 

I suppose that the burden of proof is what frustrates me. After all of the literature, conferences, articles and success stories that should have long ago removed any doubt that the Lean tools reduce waste, streamline processes and improve the competitive edge, shouldn’t it be up to the individual in doubt to disprove them? Countless capital requests have been rejected because the decision makers lack the vision and understanding to relate the impact of improved flow, velocity and responsiveness to the bottom line. Shouldn’t we require the submission of a capital request to continue functioning with the current level of waste instead of seeking approval to eliminate it? Shouldn’t doubters be required to prove Lean won’t work rather than change agents being required to prove that it will?

I can’t think of a single industry that the Lean tools cannot transform (if you can, please post a rebuttal in the comments and we will have some good - and friendly - debate over the question). Continuous process improvement leading to less waste and frustration is a core belief of the Lean practitioner. How can one argue with this basic principle? Didn’t it lead to the invention of the wheel? I suppose it is not so much the Lean principles that are hard for people to accept, but the application of these principles that doesn’t always seem obvious.

Don’t get me wrong, every Lean implementation is indeed different and special, but what must be tailored is the technique of applying the principles, not the principles or tools themselves. With that said, I will wake up Monday morning, get on a plane and go back to the constant process of introducing “new” concepts, convincing, convincing, sales, convincing and implementing change. This is the joy of being a Lean practitioner, and even though it can be frustrating at times, I am passionate about the journey and can’t imagine doing anything else.   

So, if someone in your organization comes to you and suggests an improvement idea or that the organization is in the process of launching a Lean transformation process, please research before you respond with a list of reasons why it won’t work. Remember that there are probably already a dozen or so examples of how it works in your industry and if there aren’t, you may just create a competitive advantage for your organization. If you approach it with an open mind, everyone will learn something along the way. You may even prove that your company is special and different…In the creative ways you find to implement Lean.

 

Ok, so slightly late but we finally caught up to the power of blogging.  We never thought about using this medium before because we weren’t about to employ it as yet another marketing tool.  However, after understanding the potential to use it to educate, express our views, test new and innovative ideas with you all and just have conversations with great people, we said, “Now why didn’t we ever do this before?” 

With that said, we’re incredibly pleased to announce our blog.  It is our avenue to share new research, old ideas that need to be said over and over, and maybe some general frustrations with continuous improvement that hopefully we all share. We will cover traditional topics on Lean and Lean Six Sigma and will focus on new and unique topics like Lean Office, Lean Software Development, Lean IT and general applicability of Lean and Lean Six Sigma thinking in every department from Sales to Finance to HR.

In the end, we, the principles and associates of VRDS, Inc., will share our thoughts, experiences and insights on how to transform organizations to be more agile, respond to market and environmental changes quicker and deliver the highest level of customer satisfaction. 

Our bloggers have decades of industry experience and have seen, heard and battled much in our professional lives.  Thorugh our experiences, we hope you will  learn, grow and interact with us.   Feel free to post examples and pictures on topics that resonate with you or challenge us respectfully on those issues you don’t agree with so we can dialog about them.  Either way, we’d like to hear from you.

The next few posts will be on a 30+-part series on Office Wastes, a multi-part series on Office (dis)Organization, visual management in the Office and much more.  And please, feel free to suggest topics you want to learn about or explore further. 

You can follow VRDSinc on Twitter for tweets about new blogs, subscribe to the RSS feed or simply check back with us every 1 – 2 days for new posts.   Any way you choose to follow, all we ask is that you don’t be a stranger.